Pony Tales
by Shagbark
Summary: Happy Thoughts: It would be another perfect day in Equestria. All Celestia had to do was think happy thoughts. Again. * Shipping Costs: A clopfiction author meets Celestia in the next life. * Green Hills of Equestria: Vincent's big-game hunting trip was successful... almost. * 21!: Twilight learns the danger of asking Pinkie "Why?" * Game of Immortals: Celestia likes to win.
1. Happy Thoughts!

Higher... A little to the left... There! The sun beamed brightly, seeming as happy to find itself gliding along its familiar path as she was to put it there. Another perfect start to another perfect day.

She allowed herself one brief ladylike shake of her mane before trotting off toward the royal gardens. Off at the northern arch into the keep she saw Bright Eyes, her chief minister, snort in frustration as he watched her go. Oh, there was so much to do today! And that would make it all the more fun not to do it!

Her guards stood stiffly at attention as she passed. She would have loved to stop and ask how their day was, and how the wife and kids were, and if that golden armor wasn't just a little bit hot now that her sun was climbing its way towards the top of the sky. But she knew they wouldn't like that. They wanted her to be perfect, and above them, so they could simply delight in her presence. And she could be that for them.

It wasn't as easy as it seemed, being a god. It wasn't what she had expected.

But she mustn't dwell on that. Happy thoughts, Celestia! Rainbows and unicorns!

The wrens and finches were in the garden, politely taking turns singing sweetly. That was how birds ought to behave. Birdsong was beautiful and transcendent. Not in her world would it be used to mark out territory, to warn off lust-filled competitors _this is MY tree this is MY bitch stay aWAY I'll peck your EYES out -_

She gasped as she felt the bloody intentions trickle out of her mind and leak into the world. The songs turned harsh and raucous. She staggered, grasping for control of her thoughts, while she felt the darkness inside her surging upward, sensing a chance to escape _- it wasn't FAIR! - _ One finch cocked his head at another, eyes narrowed, then leapt forward into the air toward his rival - _Luna could go far away and let her feelings ALL OUT but she had to stay here and look out for these DAMN PONIES and -_

Think happy thoughts.

She regained her footing and stood up straight, panting. A sickly yellowish haze that had gathered about her blew away in the gentle breeze. A patch of withered, brown grass extending several yards around her slowly uncurled its blades as a healthy bright green color spread up once more from its roots.

There. Finches and wrens, singing a four-part interspecies harmony, with the females on alto and soprano and the males on tenor and bass. The way things ought to be.

She drew a deep breath and raised one hoof to wipe her brow.

Then she pranced around to the front of the castle, inhaling the fragrance of the flowers, or merely admiring from a distance those too subtle for her nose. Her royal sleigh was waiting exactly where it should be, with one white pegasus stallion at each of its four corners, every bright feather in place, awaiting her orders. And though it was such a lovely day that she was tempted to spread her own wings and leap into the air right where she was, she knew how disappointed they would be. So she sprang gracefully into the sleigh, and smiled at each of her escorts in turn, and said, "To Ponyville, my dear ponies!"

They rose into the air, and she sat on a red silk cushion and looked out at her lands below her, fields and forests in a checkerboard of bright and dark green, and she knew - _knew -_ in each field and in each home were happy little ponies, and they loved her, and she would not let them down. It was going to be another beautiful day.

She gritted her teeth.

Happy thoughts.


	2. Shipping Costs

Brian drifted, weightless, in a dark tunnel of what looked like clouds. Far above him, a light twinkled invitingly. He let his eyes close as it drew him gently upwards, until -

"Gotcha!"

He blinked and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sudden light. It poured in through a rift in the side of the tunnel, where a familiar alicorn, flanked by two pegasus guards barded all in gold, stood on a platform of cloud. Her horn glowed brightly, pulling him towards them.

"Princess Celestia!" Brian shouted, as he touched down softly on the cloud. "You're REAL!" He looked up the tunnel towards the light at the other end. "And you saved my life!"

Celestia stepped forward to meet him, and her laugh made Brian think of a champagne waterfall. "My dear Brian. No, you're as dead as they come. Didn't you see the size of that truck?"

"Oh. No, I was texting."

"Of course you were," she said. She came a step closer. "Brian, because you were such a - [i]devoted [/i]fan in life, I've decided to make you a very special offer. How would you like to spend eternity in Ponyville?"

Brian clapped his hands to his ears, bent his knees and head, and yelled, "SQUEEE!"

Celestia blinked. "Squee? Did you really just say squee? Don't you know that's onomatopoeia?"

"Onomomo what?"

"Never mind. Does that mean yes?"

"Yes! Omigosh yes! This is going to be the Best... Afterlife..."

Celestia quickly raised one hoof to Brian's mouth, cutting him off. "Wonderful!" she said, with a smile that would melt glaciers. "This is going to make me very happy, Brian."

"Really? So, you're not mad about..." He fell silent.

"Yes?"

"Nothing."

She bent her head down to him with one raised eyebrow and a coquettish smile. "Oh, come now. You can tell me."

"You know," he said, looking down while shifting back and forth from one foot to the other, "the fan-fiction."

"Fan-fiction? It must have slipped my mind. I'm terribly sorry. What was it called?"

"Um... you know..." Brian mumbled something and began to blush.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"[i]Molestia does Equestria.[/i]"

"Oh!" she said, brightening. "I think I remember it now. It was pretty long, wasn't it?"

"There were a lot of characters in the show," he said, scraping one foot on a cloud.

"I seem to recall an especially steamy chapter with Featherweight."

"Maybe..."

"And Tank the Tortoise."

"Tank doesn't get enough attention."

"And a rock. What was that about?"

"Rocks need love too!"

"No, they don't." She nickered pleasantly. "But it was all in good fun. I've been known to play a prank or two myself." She turned to regard the two guards waiting just out of earshot. "Just out of curiosity, Brian. Why didn't you ever ship me with one of the strapping hunks of stallionhood that I keep by my side at all times even though I don't need any guards? It's not like I'm being subtle. I've got more eye candy that a Bond villain."

Brian blinked. He glanced at the guards, then whispered, "Well, just between us, those guys weren't exactly chosen for their personalities."

"No, they certainly weren't," Celestia said. She closed her eyes for a moment and smiled absently. "In fact," she said, "that reminds me. I really must get back to - " she glanced over her withers again at the two guards, standing ramrod straight, a fine layer of sweat on their flanks glistening in the bright sun - "some Sun-goddess things. So long, Brian. Enjoy eternity!"

"Boy, will I! I can't wait to find out who really ships with who!"

Celestia rolled her eyes. "With whom, Brian," she corrected. "Just once in your life - oh, too late. Anyway, don't be silly. There's no shipping in G3!"

"G3? What's -"

She winked, then she and her guards faded into stardust and sunbeams.

The light dimmed, and the clouds dissipated into a fine mist, and Brian found himself standing in a field of grass, covered with bright flowers. Butterflies even more colorful than the flowers fluttered here and there, leaving trails of glitter behind them. Soft, tinkling, unrelentingly cheerful music played somewhere in the distance. As the mist evaporated, Brian saw a group of brightly-colored ponies further off. They were puffy-looking, as if made out of marshmallows, and they looked back at him with the whole-hearted smiles of children. Or half-wits.

"Hey, everybody!" a pony said in a squeaky voice. "It's a new friend to play with!"

A differently-colored but otherwise identical pony said in an almost-identical voice, "I love having friends! Don't you love having friends?"

"Oh, yes! I'm just so excited. Aren't you so excited?"

"Yes! I am excited!" The marshmallow ponies thundered softly towards him. The gentle, chiming music started the same saccharine refrain for a third time.

"Da BUCK?" Brian said. He looked up to the skies. "Princess Celestia! HELP!"

But Princess Celestia was busy.


	3. The Green Hills of Equestria

Vincent lay on his cot. The sun outside was bright, and the shadow of the maple tree on the canvas roof of his tent was sharp. He had not raised the fly off the roof vents, and the air in the tent was hot. He took another swig from the bottle of whiskey on the floor beside the cot. He should be out guarding the trophies, not getting drunk in his tent. God knew what kind of predators they had in this place.

He drank whiskey from the bottle when he was very happy, or very sad. He did not know which it was this time. It had been a clean shot, and when he got home they would mount the head on the wall of the lodge, and Vincent would be a somebody. Even Sir Gradson had never shot a unicorn. That crazy witch doctor who brought them here knew what he was doing after all.

The creature had walked right into their camp. Sometimes they did that. You never could predict animals. It had walked underneath the oak they had hung the carcasses from to drain, and stretched its neck down to sniff the blood on the ground. It hadn't noticed Vincent lying behind a clump of ferns not fifty yards away. The angle was no good. Its neck was in the way of its heart, and the Rigby .465 left holes that made taxidermists cry. There were mosquitoes in the shade under the ferns, and they had bitten his arms and face as he waited for the thing to lift its head.

"Daddy," he heard a little girl call.

"Go 'way," Vincent muttered.

Brett thought the lodge was going to mount his gryphon over the fireplace, in the empty space to the left of Sir Gradson's tigers. When he and Molo returned, he would see the unicorn stallion's carcass hanging from the oak tree, and would know that his gryphon would never be mounted over the fireplace next to the tigers.

"DADDY!" the little girl screamed.

Vincent cursed, and took another drink. "Leave me 'lone!" he shouted. "You aren't real!"

The gryphon had also screamed, for a long time after Brett gut-shot it. Brett always yanked the trigger. A loop of intestine had fallen out, and the thing had attacked it, yanking it out like a long, pink-purple earthworm. If it had flown off instead, they never would have found the body.

Now the little girl was sobbing. She sounded almost real.

"Honey," Vincent called hoarsely. "It wasn't Daddy's fault. Daddy didn't wanna leave you. Your mommy wanted a somebody." He rolled onto his back and stared at the patterns the maple leaves cast on the tent roof. "But 's gon' be okay," he slurred quietly. "Daddy's a somebody now."

The sobbing continued. "Daddy... Daddy... Oh, Daddy..."

Vincent staggered to his feet. He stumbled once on his way to the end of the tent. He was terrible with children, even when he was sober and they were real. "Hold on, honey," he said as he opened the tent flap. "Daddy's coming."


	4. Twenty one!

On the way back from Fluttershy's cottage, Twilight almost didn't register the familiar voice coming from a dead-end street on the outskirts of Ponyville. "Twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

She had a familiar sense of foreboding. She knew that she should continue walking and not stop to find out what Pinkie Pie was doing. Also, that she would stop anyway.

Twilight walked down the street towards the sound, until she saw a familiar pink pony, still chanting, jumping high up into the air and then landing on a ponyhole cover in the middle of the street, over and over again. A crowbar was slotted into place just under the lip of the cover, as if she had been about to remove it and then gotten distracted by a sudden fit of jumping.

"Pinkie Pie?" Twilight asked. "What are you doing?"

Pinkie landed on the ponyhole cover. She cocked her head at Twilight. She looked down at the iron cover. She looked back at Twilight.

"Is this a trick question?" she asked.

Twilight shook her head violently, trying to clear it of the impression that Pinkie was making more sense than she was. "Okay," she said, "I can see that you're jumping up and down on a ponyhole cover and shouting 'twenty-one!'"

Pinky nodded eagerly and gave Twilight a wide, congratulatory smile. "You got it!" She began jumping again. "Twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

"But WHY are you jumping up and down on a ponyhole cover and shouting 'twenty-one!'?" Twilight shoulded up at her.

Pinky came to a stop again. She raised one hoof to her chin, perplexed. "I don't think I understand the question."

"What's not to understand? Why -"

"Stop! That's it. That word. It confuses me."

"Why -"

"Yes! That's the one."

"No, I mean -" Twilight scrunched up her nose in thought. "Why does it rain?"

"That's easy!" Pinkie said. "Because pegasus ponies make it rain! Didn't you know that, Twilight? Twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

"Of COURSE I knew that! My point was that you understood the question. The use of the word 'why' indicates I am asking what caused some event."

"Yes," Pinky said, between jumps, "I. Know. That." She came to a stop again and leaned forward to come nose-to-nose with Twilight. "But since I am a sentient and purposeful agent, my will constitutes the final cause of all my actions, and your asking me for a cause of my jumping up and down when you can clearly see its final cause constitutes a violation of the Gricean conversational maxims, silly!" She began jumping again. "Twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

"GAAAAAH!" Twilight said. "How do you even KNOW about Aristrotle and Grice?"

"Who? Twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

"GAAAH-AAH-AAH!" Twilight said, hoping to drive the point home this time.

She began pacing back and forth, while Pinkie kept jumping and shouting "twenty-one" at the pinnacle of each leap. Phrasing her question, Twilight realized, was a semantic problem. Pinkie literally did not know why she did what she did. But Twilight was still curious; and that proved that "why," at least in the sense of intentions, wasn't what she really wanted to know.

"Twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

Pinkie Pie's lack of conscious insight into her motivation wasn't mere cluelessness, Twilight realized. Most people in fact had no conscious insight into any of their motivations; they merely invented them after the fact, as demonstrated by experiments in which people were asked to justify decisions that were the opposite of the ones they had actually made. Pinkie was actually more self-aware than most in apprehending her lack of self-awareness.

"Twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

Perhaps, Twilight thought, she should take a behaviorist approach. She was interested in the operational effects of this activity, not Pinkie Pie's motivations. And yet, she could not treat Pinkie Pie as a black box, as B.F. Skinhorse would have advocated, since the primary effects were probably some subjective emotional payoff.

But, if she focused on the action's conscious effects, rather than its conscious causes...

"Pinkie!" Twilight finally said.

Pinkie stopped. "Yes?"

"How do you feel when you jump up in the air on a ponyhole cover and shout 'twenty-one'?"

"I feel great!"

"Hmm," Twilight said. "Not really helpful. Wait - hold on, give me a moment." She smiled slyly. "I've got it. Pinkie, how would _I_ feel if I jumped up and down on a ponyhole cover and shouted 'twenty-one'?"

"Well, that's a silly question!" Pinkie said with a laugh.

"GAA- Why is it any sillier than jumping up and down and shouting 'twenty-one'?"

"Because," Pinkie anwered, "the only way to answer it is to do it!"

"You're... right," Twilight said. "You're actually right." Twilight shook her head again, even more violently.

"Course I am! Twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

"Pinkie... PINKIE!"

Pinkie came to a stop yet again, smiling as excitedly as if she were just seeing Twilight for the first time. "Yes, Twilight?"

"Pinkie, may I jump on your... um... can I try that?"

"Okie-dokie-lokie!" Pinkie stepped aside, and Twilight stepped on to the heavy iron cover. She looked up and down the street to make sure no ponies were in sight.

"Well," she said, "here goes."

Twilight began hopping up and down.

"You've got to count!" Pinkie said.

"Twenty-one... twenty-one..."

"Louder!"

"Twenty-ONE... twenty-ONE..."

"Faster!"

"Twenth-ONE, twenty-ONE, twenty-ONE..."

"HIGHER!"

Twilight grunted as she jumped as high as she could, and shouted, "Twenty-ONE! Twenty-ONE..."

At the top of Twilight's jump, Pinkie stomped on the crowbar with all four hooves. The ponyhole cover flipped off like a tiddlywink, and Pinkie watched as Twilight dropped into the hole with barely enough time to register a look of surprise before she disappeared from sight. A loud and disturbing THUD came out of the hole.

Pinkie walked over to the cover, and kicked it until it slid back into place over the hole. Then she walked onto it, and began jumping up and down again.

"Twenty-TWO, twenty-TWO, twenty-TWO..."


	5. Game of Immortals

Celestia trotted into the hedge garden behind the castle. The sky was a bright hazy blue, the heat of the sun drove the aroma off the leaves of the lavender and rosemary bushes and into the air, birds sang, and beetles buzzed. This day was all the more beautiful to her because she had waited so long for it.

She quickly found the lopsided statue of her old draconequine nemesis. Her horn began to glow, and she touched it to the statue's belly. A patch of color appeared on the white marble there and began to spread. The frozen white fur glowed with color and began to ripple in the wind, and the scales glistened in the sunlight. Last of all, the stone eyes came to life. Discord quickly locked eyes with the princess. He jumped back and arched his back in a more threatening pose.

"Back for more so soon?" he asked. "Did you finally tire of your little proteges? Or are they waiting around the corner to blast me again with..."

Celestia raised a hoof to interrupt. "No, no, stop. Time's up."

The cocky look on Discord's face vanished. "What? Are you sure?" Then he added, sulkily, "I spent over a year preparing my banter!"

"I'm sure," Celestia said. "Add it up. I ruled the first three thousand years. Then you had a thousand, then I had a thousand."

Discord pursed his lips moodily. "I think the first two thousand were more of a tie."

Celestia smiled her radiant sun-goddess smile. "If you say so. Now, let's see. I counted two hundred seventy-five thousand, three hundred and ninety-one songs, poems, stories, plays, paintings, sculptures, and other artistic works about me, and... forty-four thousand, six hundred and seventeen about you. Oooh. That must smart."

"I'm more difficult to draw!" Discord protested.

"Nonsense," Celestia said. "You're far easier, since it's practically impossible to draw anything that looks worse than you."

"Now you're just being mean, Tia," Discord moped. "I don't think I want to play anymore."

"Don't be a sore loser," Celestia said. "Just a short game. Two thousand years."

Discord eyed her warily. "No turning anypony into a statue this time?"

Celestia's smile lost a little of its radiance. "Oh..." She kicked a pebble along the flagstone path with one hoof. "All right. No statues."

Discord frowned down at the ground for several seconds, then looked up at her. "Okay," he said reluctantly. "But this time, I get to play white."


End file.
